The Rag Coat

This week our "school-time" has centered around the book The Rag Coat by Lauren Mills. This is such a sweet story. The first time reading it out-loud, I had a hard time finishing the book. It's a tear jerker! Anyway, I can appreciate any story that centers around quilts and friendship. We also read The Patchwork Quilt, by Valerie Flournoy, also a good heartwarming story.
Anyway,  The Rag Coat is set in the Appalachian mountains and there is reference to carding cotton, I figured our activities for the week should have to do with natural fabrics and what we can learn about them. First I introduced some natural fabrics and showed the children pictures of the plants and animals these fabrics are made from. Then we did some water absorbency/resistance experiment to see which of the fabrics repelled water best.

 Then we tried our hand at natural dyeing. This turned out to be tons of fun, chopping up fruit and veggies together, making our dye baths and then letting our fabric swatches soak all morning before squeezing them out and seeing how they changed color. We had mixed results. The fruit dyes worked beautifully for us, but the vegetable dyes barely changed the color of the fabric. I got my recipes from Pioneer Thinking .

 We have also done some water-color quilt patterns and tomorrow we will be doing shape matching and patterning with geometric shapes. All in all it's been a fun week.

 

Earlier in the week were out shopping and Tristan decided he really liked this tie. So, I bought him the tie; this is how he went to story hour at the library this week. Anastasia was also looking adorable and wanted her picture on the camera:)